Category Archives: Thoughts

In this I article I would like to address a post that was created on CARM.ORG. CARM is the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, an organization devoted to the defense of the Christian gospel and ideologies. The post I’d like to address is a CARM writer’s response to an email written concerning Christians and their support of the death penalty. The email reads:

” The Bible says it is forbidden to kill, yet many Christians in America support the death penalty and order wars and bombs which kill tens of thousands, yet this is somehow rationalized and an excuse is made as to how this does not violate Christianity, when it plainly does.”

This is a very serious statement and is quite hard to address when dealing with the “turn the other cheek” principle and forgiveness that Jesus taught. Is it Biblically moral for a Christian (a New Testament following Christian) to believe that the killing of a person who has committed a crime, is just?

The response to this email is blurred by word play, but in the end the conclusion is:

“Furthermore, murder is the unlawful taking of life. Killing is the lawful taking of life. Therefore, in the issue of taking life we must determine whether or not is lawful or not. If a murderer is sentenced to death in a lawful manner via the law of the land, then it is not murder.”

With this conclusion one can see immediate problems, starting with the assumption that there is a lawful and unlawful taking of life. This is then followed up by saying that the lawfulness of taking a life is determined by the ‘law of the land’, thus immediately raising the question “Does this in turn justify Sha’ria law also?”

Not only does the statement made by the writer of this article, produced by CARM.org, suggest that the taking of life can be lawful, it also condones revenge.

“[…]God gives us the right of self-defense and sometimes in that self-defense, it is necessary to kill someone.”

Self-defense would be prohibiting something harmful from happening in the first place. Revenge is making a harmful action after the initial wrong has been done. And of these two categories, the death penalty would fall under the latter.

To follow a Christian principle of forgiveness, murder cannot be justified, but if one feels so inclined to quote an obscure Old Testament verse that condones war or violence or murder, and rape for that matter, then remember this, using a holy scripture to justify your actions can go both ways. Any person who thinks it is lawful to take your life can be justified by scripture also.

Murder and Killing are two terms for the same act, taking ones life. Does either term seem less violent? No, Killing is Murder, Murder is Killing, they are one in the same. However, it is no surprise that Christian Fundamentalists do not share this view.

On May 1st, relatively late into the night, the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death was released to the world, thus radiating celebratory noise in the streets of New York City and Washington D.C. This finally brought some closure to the families that suffered from the extreme pain caused to them by the loss of their loved ones back in 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked by suicide bombers, along with the Pentagon.

With over three thousand lives lost on the bright morning of September 11th, 2001, people have yearned for some sort of justice to be done on behalf of their great loss. And finally after almost an entire decade this justice has been brought. And I would like to show great happiness for those families, and hope that this has brought some sort of relief to them.

When I heard the first reports of this, I did not believe it, but immediately I turned on the TV and quickly went to CNN’s website, to see none other than the headlines of “Osama Bin Laden, the face of terror, killed in Pakistan” and soon to follow the headlines, President Obama addressed the nation, explaining what exactly happened and telling the American people to stay ‘vigilant’ when it comes to defending against the forces of Al-Qaeda.

We have overcome a great hurdle as a nation by the removal of such a strong force in the world of terror, and I would like to show recognition to each of the men and women in the military that have put forth effort to bring relief to the people of the United States.

Though I do not condone war in any form, nor revenge, I do not wish to denounce the fact that there were many people who suffered because of this man. If there was a way other than murder for this to be carried out, I would have supported that whole-heartedly. I do however, believe that this needed to be done one way or another, and that closure has finally come for the families affected.

The human being, as a collaborative whole, is only free once we live outside the boundaries of our malevolent and socially destructive walls. When one has relentlessly sought after truth, reason and their own existence they will, in the end, see the larger picture; the culmination of life in all of its vibrance, its wonder, mystery and the consternation that is caused by our every experience. We are yet a moment into the progression of a vastly more interesting being than ourselves, which we call: Time.

It travels beyond the borders of all that has existed and it is unfairly defined. You were born this morning and you are to die later this day. There are no years. There are no months, or weeks, or days. Hours or Minutes. There is just the sun and the moon. The sky, the cosmos, the universe, and the rotation of our spherical rock, solid mass, orbiting a flaming star of gas and matter.

Time is no more than an illusion. You can not spend Time, you can not lose Time. You can not waste Time, and you can not buy Time. You can not touch, taste, smell, see, or hear it.